Chapter Twelve.
Lyrical – Ten years later
“Is that the last of them?” Jesse asked.
I look around the living room, hands on hips. “Unless you have some boxes in the truck, I think we’re good.”
Jamie came down the hall with Keys, the newest member of the team, right behind him.
The poor guy. Unfortunately, being the FNG made him easy pickings.
Apparently, Jamie had yet another conquest from the local bar, and he was giving a blow-by-blow account of last night’s adventure, mimicking a slapping motion in the air, demonstrating his spanking prowess on the girl’s behind.
When he caught me out of the corner of his eye, he immediately stopped his retelling, coughed into his fist, and smiled apologetically. “Sorry, Lyrical.”
I held my hands up in surrender. “I have no tender sensibilities left after thirteen years of your playboy ways.”
He picked me up, swung me around in a circle, making a “grr” noise as he did so. “Sweet sister-in-law, you’re too good to me!”
“Put my wife down, you neanderthal,” Jesse grumbled good-naturedly from the doorway.
“Aww… He’s jealous. How sweet.” Just to taunt his brother, he gave me a loud smack on the cheek and a smack on the butt.
Rubbing the stinging cheek, I frowned at him. “I’m not one of your barflies, Jamie.”
He winked and headed for the deck out back. “Time for the obligatory beer and pizza.”
Keys was still standing in the hall’s archway, looking slightly dazed.
“Thanks for helping, Keys,” I offered. “Hopefully, you won’t have to deal with him too often.”
“You’re welcome, ma’am.”
I smiled. “It’s Lyrical, Keys.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Shaking my head and smiling, I shooed him out onto the deck. “Go on. Eat. Drink. Moving ten years of stuff is hot, sweaty work. And don’t set yourself on fire if you stay for the firepit antics!” I reminded him.
Closing the door on the team outside, I stood there, watching them act like hooligans, and let out an enormous sigh of relief that everything was inside that should be, and that I got a moment’s peace before heading out there with them.
Jamie was in a different battalion of the Raiders than Jesse.
His being home was a lucky coincidence timed with the move to the new house.
He’s still off on his super-secret missions, although Jesse implied their paths cross from time to time.
That worried me, because while my husband is a Raider, it took little to know Jamie was something above and beyond my husband, which meant when they crossed paths, those missions were extra dangerous.
Jesse’s team had been home for six weeks, so we pushed through the purchase of our new home to take advantage of their free labor. Beer and pizza notwithstanding.
The team was tight, although retirement recently claimed one of their guys, and an Achilles injury medically discharged another.
He wasn’t even on a mission, just playing football at their base camp.
The new guy was supposedly arriving next week, a guy named Tiguan.
He’s been a Marine for a while, but only recently bumped up to the Raiders.
Honcho, the only other married member of the team, was their team leader, and Oz, his best friend from back home, was the team chief. He’s a quiet one. Still waters run deep, and all that. Honcho was the gregarious one, which made them the perfect foils for each other.
Mr. X, another longstanding member of the team, and Jesse, who got the nickname Mayhem in Infantry School to pair with his brother, were the tactical leadership during assaults or reconnaissance. I tried not to think about what that entailed.
Titan and Edge were the intelligence guys. They did everything together. Jesse once let it slip that he thought they’re a couple, but if they were, I had seen no signs of it. Living in each other’s pockets the way they did, the team would be more likely to see the signs.
The core operators were Sapo, their close-quarters combat specialist; Keys, a drone expert; Tiguan, the new breacher; and Shakespeare, their linguistics and culture expert.
He was super smart, and probably my favorite of the bunch.
We spent a lot of time talking about the children and women they came into contact with.
As much as he could tell me, anyway. He helped hook me up with a women’s shelter for Middle Eastern women here in San Diego, and I’d been volunteering for the last few weeks.
The team’s medic was Tripoli and a lot like Jamie.
Apparently, when the two of them got together, no woman was safe from losing her panties.
Technically, he was in the Navy, but since the Marines used the Navy for most of their support, he was an honorary Raider.
According to Jesse, he had some super combat skills for being a “doc.”
Then there was Click, their EOD guy, always down for a practical joke, and last but not least, Banshee.
She was their only female and their K-9 handler.
Like Jesse, she came and went, as dictated by whatever mission the team got assigned.
We got along okay, but I sense she suffered a lot of prejudice in the Marines.
The team backed her one hundred percent, but prior to being assigned to Jesse’s crew, it wasn’t easy.
He said she was warming up slowly, but she kept to herself a lot.
Arms snaked around my waist, and a pair of soft lips kissed my cheek. “Happy to be here, sweetness?”
My eyes closed as I squeezed his forearms. Safety. Security. Everything I loved was right here. “There’s nowhere I’d rather be than in your arms, Jesse.”
He chuckled. “I meant the house and being off base.”
“I know what you meant.” Turning in his arms, I slid my palms up his torso to land on his pecs. His heart beat steadily under my right hand, and he had that typical soft smile on his face reserved for me. “I hope this move keeps your family off our backs.”
Jesse grimaced. “If it doesn’t, we’ll just file for another civil harassment order. If I’m not here, you don’t waste time and you go to Ephraim, yes?”
Ephraim helped us out when Jesse’s dad tried to bribe me years ago to leave Jesse.
We’ve had to file two restraining orders in the past ten years, and the second one is coming up for expiration.
Unfortunately, we couldn’t renew it until he contacted us again, but we were lucky because Ephraim had our backs and knew a judge who was sympathetic.
I really didn’t want to go through the process again, but I knew I’d probably have to.
“Yes, I promise.”
“Good.”
We stood in silence, watching our friends through the patio doors to our new backyard.
I would especially enjoy the deck. Jesse bought me a gorgeous lounge chair where I would read my romance novels.
He also purchased a fire pit for barbecues and hangout nights with our friends.
There were flower beds to weed and keep me occupied as a new hobby.
But there was one feature in the yard we hadn’t really discussed, although I knew we’d both noticed it on the walk-through.
A swing set. A nice one. Relatively new since the family that lived here before us had only owned the home for just under a year when the husband got transferred across the country for work.
“You know,” Jesse began, “we’re supposed to be home for a while. Things have been pretty quiet.”
“Shh!” I chastised him. “Every time you say that, you know what happens.”
He hugged me close as I nestled in under his chin, watching the boys drag out the cornhole boards. Someone was getting pummelled with those, eventually. It never failed. You’d think they’d had enough of getting shot at when deployed that they wouldn’t have to beat up on each other.
“Anyway,” Jesse continued. “Honcho mentioned the elephant in the backyard. Wondered if it was our way of telling the team something.”
“What did you tell him?” I held my breath.
“Told him it came with the house.”
“Oh.”
He spoke again, his speech laced with hesitation. “We’re doing pretty well. We started a little rough, but we’ve saved quite a bit of money, thanks to my thrifty wife.”
I blushed at the praise.
“And we’ve got a new house with three bedrooms,” he added. “Not sure I’m a minivan guy, but there are some decent SUVs out there with good safety ratings.”
I pulled back to look up at him. Trying to school my face and refusing to get my hopes up, I asked, “Are you hinting at having a baby?”
“What do you think?” he whispered. “Is that something you want?”
“We’ve never talked about it. Is it something you want?”
“To be honest, I hadn’t thought much about it until we looked at the house. The swing set got me thinking.”
“Me too,” I admitted.
The truth was, Jesse and I… well… our marriage was…
different. We were incredibly close. We loved each other exclusively and deeply.
His father, years ago, hinted he would stray as “all” military men did.
Not Jesse. In fact, his team teased him mercilessly because he didn’t even look. His response was always the same.
“I’ve got my sweetness. She’s all I see.”
We were cuddlers; we kissed often, but the physical side of our marriage was quiet.
That didn’t mean we didn’t make love, because we did, but not terribly often.
However, when we did, it was always slow.
Gentle. It may not have been exciting and filled with all-consuming passion like my novels depicted, but that was fiction anyway. No one sustained a marriage on that.
Heck, Jamie couldn’t sustain more than one night. And while the other guys had girlfriends occasionally, they never seemed to last long either. Only Honcho was long-lasting, married to his high school sweetheart, and they had a daughter, a beautiful baby girl named Brooklyn.
“I have pangs every once in a while,” I told him. “I think I’d love being a mom to a little girl or boy, especially if they looked like you.”
“We could end up with twins,” he warned.
That was a danger since the gene ran in his family.
“We’d manage.”
He gave me that soft smile again, and we met halfway with a kiss to seal the deal.
I felt him harden against me, and he groaned.
Our foreheads touched. “Shitty timing. I’ll never get those knuckleheads out of our yard until at least midnight.
And one or two might end up sleeping on the couch or in the spare room. Not exactly conducive to romance.”
I giggled. “That’s okay. We’ve got plenty of time.”
“Love you, sweetness.”
“I love you too.”